Rite of Passage
by fen-san
Summary: Ryouga's really lost this time. A young Ryouga finds himself far more lost than usual.


Disclaimer - Ranma ½ is owned by Rumiko Takahashi and associates, this is a not-for-profit fanwork borrowing her characters and concepts for fun.

Rite Of Passage

This wasn't Nerima, in fact Ryouga would go so far as to guess he wasn't in Tokyo at all any more. Sensei had asked him to go out and fetch the spare bokken from his car before Ryouga changed into his gi for training and … well somehow the twelve-year-old boy had taken a wrong turn somewhere. He was pretty sure Tokyo didn't have any pine forests as thick as this and the majestic snowcapped mountains piercing the sky in the distance didn't look like they belonged in his home-town. The gorgeous scenery seemed almost incandescent as the fiery rays of the setting sun rolled across the quiet landscape.

It didn't look like getting home to Auntie Reika and his cousin, Mayuri, was going to be as easy as usual. Usually he just asked someone to guide him to the nearest train station and took the train back to the station at the end of the road Auntie Reika's flat was on. From there the man at the information desk usually telephoned Auntie and either she or Mayuri would come and fetch him from the desk where Hirota-san let him stand so he didn't get lost again. Hirota-san was a really big fan of baseball and while Ryoga thought he was a bit boring, he was kind and didn't laugh at him for always getting lost like most people did.

Ryouga shivered, his school uniform wasn't very warm now that the sun was setting. He looked around the clearing he'd come to and decided it looked like a good enough place to stay the night. He now understood why his parents were so insistent on making sure he knew how to safely start, maintain and extinguish a fire. Reaching inside his shirt he fished out the little flint and steel hanging from his neck on a sturdy cord.

Gathering firewood, sweeping the forest floor clear so there were no branches or pine needles around where he was going to lay his fire and the process of igniting the fire was soothing, a routine he'd been part of nearly his whole life. When he'd been little enough for his parents to carry him in their packs he'd watched the nightly ritual of the fire-lighting with interest and when he was too big to carry and went to live with Auntie Reika every golden week when they went trekking in the mountains and woods she'd made him practice, as had his parents every time they found Nerima. It had been a cosy ritual his whole life and the warm, bright fire cheered him up.

Ryouga rummaged in his school bag for the bottle of water he kept in there for such incidences as this, but it was only a half-litre bottle and he couldn't hear any water flowing at all, so he just had a couple of sips to quench his thirst before putting the lid back on and carefully putting it away again. An owl hooted in a nearby tree and Ryouga sighed, then carefully banked the fire, curling up near it.

He woke up shivering, curled in a tight ball far closer to the still smouldering embers of the campfire than he had been when he'd gone to sleep. He jumped to his feet, moving fast to cover the fire with dirt. He relieved himself against a tree to the sound of birdsong and had another sip of water before slinging his school bag onto his back and starting his morning kata routine, practising the first two kata of blocks, the stance kata, his father's ki kata and the new blocks and strikes kata Sensei had taught him earlier that month that would be part of his next grading. Not that Ryouga liked gradings much, it disappointed him that even when he worked extra hard at his martial arts training still the people at the dojo who were silly and not dedicated could pass the gradings with inferior, sloppy technique. Nonetheless he loved studying martial arts and hearing the stories the various sensei had to tell about Japanese warriors of old, of how techniques were developed and the ways in which a true warrior should behave. They sounded like the guys talking over the samurai films he liked to watch and sometimes let him borrow books of other stories too.

By the time he'd finished his kata he was nice and warm and the sun had finished rising so he carried on walking, picking a direction at random. It wasn't as if he could get more lost than lost, was it? His stomach grumbled as he walked and worry started to creep into his mind. What if he never found civilisation again? What if he starved? What if he had to fight a bear like in that tv series? Most of all he was starting to miss home - Auntie Reiko didn't like giving him hugs like he remembered his mother having done, but she was always willing to help him with his homework and when he was sad she made him odango. Her odango were the best in the whole of Honshu!

Ryouga was so caught up in his bleak imaginings that he didn't even notice when the soil underfoot gave way first to a gravelled track, then to concrete paving slabs. What did penetrate the mountain of fear and worry building up in his chest was a delicious smell. His stomach rumbled even more loudly than before and Ryouga followed his nose until he came to a brightly-painted crepe stand. Gladness surged up in him as he shoved his hand in his school trouser pockets and his fingers encountered loose shiny coins. The envelope of money in his school bag was to buy his train ticket back to Nerima - Auntie had drummed that lesson into him - but thanks to that jerk Saotome Ranma at school taking the last melon-bread at lunch yesterday he still had his lunch money!

Ryouga wandered away from the stand, slowly eating his first meal in more than twenty-four hours. The strawberries wrapped inside the warm crepe were soft and sweet and he closed his eyes to savour them a moment as he tried to follow the vendor's directions to the nearby train station.

'Where am I?' Ryouya suddenly wailed as the sudden realisation hit him that he must have missed the train station somehow. The road he found himself walking along was hemmed in on either side by lush green fields. Frustrated, the boy growled some of the words he'd heard his neighbour Akira-san use when he'd helped Auntie fix the washing-machine. They felt odd on his tongue though and he reverted to just grumbling under his breath, Still, he carried on walking anyway, unable to think where to even start retracing his steps and fortune of fortunes! He came upon a small rural village.

Wearily he plonked his bum on a bench in what looked to be the diminutive village's square, taking the weight off his throbbing feet with a sigh of relief. Simple physical tiredness had chased away the mounting fear and worry he'd been feeling and instead he just savoured the rest, looking around at his surroundings with interest. He noticed an old lady come out of the small shop, facing onto the square and it quickly became apparent she was struggling with the two bags of groceries she was carrying. Ryouga jumped up at that, sore feet forgotten. As a martial artist the importance of showing mercy and honour (especially to the weak and elderly) had been thoroughly drummed into him.

'Can I help you with that, Obaa-san?' he asked, gesturing towards the bags, eager to lift them from her hands, but constrained by manners.

The lady seemed surprised, but as she looked up at him her lined face cracked into a smile at his earnest expression. 'Thank-you lad. These bags are very heavy and it's nice to see such a mannerly strong young man.'

Ryouga blushed slightly at her compliments, but accepted the bags gladly and walked along beside her to the outskirts of the village where he placed the bags just inside her front door for her. As she'd noted he was a strong, stout fellow and the exercise had barely winded him. He couldn't help returning her sunny, infectious smile and flinched back in surprise when she reached into her kimono sleeve to pull out a couple of hundred yen in coins, pressing them into his hand. 'Get yerself a treat, you've more than earnt some candy.'

Ryouga spluttered, backing away. 'Obaa-san, I helped you because it was the right thing to do, not because I wanted a reward!'

She ignored his protest, saying that it was her money and she could do with it as she liked. For a moment there was a battle of wills between two very stubborn people, before Ryouga's respect for his elders won out and he accepted the coins. Still, at least now he could afford to buy himself another meal and that shop shouldn't be hard to get back to! With a polite bow and a very hungry stomach he headed off, daydreaming of Auntie Reika's delicious gyouza. Three kilometres later he had to come to the conclusion that he must have missed the shop.

The mountains surrounding him were absolutely gorgeous, but Ryouga barely noticed them. His third day lost had started out wet and he'd woken shivering with cold, stomach growling. His luck had turned slightly when the rain had engorged a tiny mountain stream and he'd followed the sound, drinking his fill and letting the cold water numb his appetite. He'd refilled his empty water bottle and washed his face and hands while he'd been there so he suspected he looked quite tidy.

Melancholy had settled over him like a damp blanket on that drizzly day and Ryouga despaired of ever seeing his aunt and cousin again. His mind began to throw up increasingly bizarre scenarios such as him dying and somehow being preserved in snow for thousands of years until future archaeologists dug him up and constructed elaborate theories about how he'd got there.

His depressive musings were halted by someone leaping out at him from behind a stone. 'Gimme all yer money kid!' The scruffy bandit demanded. His scruffy, patched clothes and skinny state implied his patch wasn't a very good one for banditry.

Hot anger coursed through Ryouga. 'No! I do not bow down to scum like you who prey on those weaker than themselves!' For a moment he felt like the hero in one of his beloved samurai epics and he sunk into a powerful horse stance, rooted in the earth as ki rose up within him, warming him for the first time in days.

In the distance a stout, dark bearded man started in surprise as he heard a familiar voice and sensed a rush of familiar ki, albeit stronger than the last time he'd felt it. He tightened the strap of his backpack and began to move swiftly towards the familiar ki.

The bandit charged at Ryouga, trying to stab him, but Ryouga slid to one side and slammed his left arm down in a bone jarring power-block. He then seized the man's knife hand and twisted, flipping him over in an economical wrist-throw. The bandit scrambled to his feet, 'You think you're a tough guy just 'cus you got a lucky throw in, eh?', he growled and charged in once more.

Dai arrived and saw Ryouga facing off against some sort of thug. He tensed, ready to intervene if he thought the boy was in serious danger, but staying out of the way and observing the fight in the meantime. After several minutes of being thrown about by the pre-pubescent kid he fled, nursing both bruises and a dented ego.

'You've really improved, I see you've worked very hard at the ki kata I showed you, son!'

'Dad!' Ryouga's face lit up and he threw himself into Dai's arms, hugging him tightly.

They walked along the mountain path together, both Hibikis lost, but being lost together made Ryouga feel that maybe getting back to Tokyo wasn't as important as he'd thought. They talked sporadically, swapping what news they had for one another about what had happened since they'd last bumped into one another. They gathered firewood as they found it along the path and once Dai was content with their collection they found a good resting point and built a fire together in easy harmony. Dai began to brew tea and Ryouga clutched his cup to him, trying to absorb heat from the cup as it cooled to a drinkable temperature.

'Oh, you must be cold! I forgot you probably haven't learnt how to manipulate you ki to keep you warm yet.' Dai dropped a large, warm tunic across Ryouga's shoulders and he grudgingly put down his hot cup for long enough to shrug into the oversized garmet. 'You're probably hungry too, aren't you?' His question was answered by a grumble from Ryouga's belly.

Dai reached up and tugged at the knot of his bandana, manipulating his ki flow delicately to pull a duplicate bandana from the original's knot. 'You can practice a new technique,' he said, watching the excitement build on Ryouga's face. 'No, not the miroir-modeleur technique. The name of the technique I'm going to show you today translates from the original Italian as 'iron cloth'. The Italian man who taught me the Iron Cloth Technique was an escape artist who used it to escape any prison by either slicing through the bars or picking the lock. By channelling your ki through the material you can shape it and harden it to do whatever you like. Now stay still and observe my technique very carefully.'

Dai performed the technique several times over and over, settling the cloth into an improvised knife shape that he used to start chopping a wizened carrot he'd pulled from his backpack. He then altered the shape again with his ki to make a bowl that he dumped the chopped carrot in, He looked at Ryouga and saw awe in the child's eyes. To have his son look at him with such an expression in his face filled Dai's heart to bursting with joy. 'Once you learn this technique so long as you have cloth you'll always have a knife or bowl to use, even if all the rest of your equipment is lost. It's a technique that's been very useful to me over the years.'

By the time Ryouga had practiced to his father's high standard he was almost falling over with tiredness, thanks to the different and exhausting use of ki. Dai made a curry with the vegetables Ryouga had used as cutting practice and after they ate the pair of them squeezed into Dai's tent together to get a nice warm night's sleep.

As they walked along the next day the pair of Hibikis discussed martial arts. While Dai wasn't a master, he was nonetheless a skilled martial artist with a wide knowledge of different styles from his travels. He set Ryouga a set of exercises to build his stamina and improve his ki control, talking about that rather than the fact that Ryouga had evidently come into his inheritance as a Hibiki.

Family legend had it that once upon a time a distant ancestor had been foolish enough to offend a kitsune, who had cursed the man's family to wander the Earth, unable to find their way to any place, separated by their curse and without rest. The creature had not been without mercy and children of the family generally had a milder form of the curse, leaving them wandering their hometown until found by friends. The full impact of the curse only hit when the children became adults. For Ryouga to be wandering the mountains instead of Tokyo, coupled with the fact he'd shot up a good ten centimetres since Dai had last seen him meant the curse must be seeing him as a man. Reika would have to help get him settled into the family house down the road from her, as agreed when she'd taken her nephew in. They'd long ago agreed that it would be cruel to expect her to break her heart constantly searching and worrying for him when the curse fully developed. Instead she'd agreed to drop by the family house twice daily where he'd live with the family dog, who'd sadly had to stay there when Auntie Reika found out that her tenancy agreement didn't allow for pets.

Dai blinked back into awareness from his melancholy thoughts about his son's future (if it were anything like his life it was likely to be hard and incredibly lonely) to discover that their errant feet had apparently brought them to a large train station. 'Time for you to head home, son. Please give Auntie Reika my regards and this envelope.' He produced a slightly dog-eared letter he'd been carrying for this eventuality. Then he accosted a station guard and asked his help in getting Ryouga onto the right train to get him back to Tokyo.

Dai watched it draw away, ignoring the pang of sorrow in his chest. After it had vanished into the distance he looked for a telephone booth, sighting one and not taking his eyes off it as he headed for it, knowing he might get lost otherwise.

Auntie Reika was waiting for him at the train station. Dad must have called her from a pay 'phone. 'Welcome home Ryo. I'm glad you're looking so well. Let's go home, it looks like you need a bath and I'm making gyouza for tea, so we'd better hurry before Maiyuri eats them all.'

Ryouga smiled gladly at his aunt and let her hold his hand to get him home. He touched his new yellow bandana with his free hand, glad he'd seen his father again, even if it had taken getting so badly lost to achieve it.


End file.
